Newswriting Styles: What Arouses the Reader?

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1 by Lewis Donohew Newswriting Styles: What Arouses the Reader? Narrative style consistently produces greater arousal more favorable response. Use of '*punchy" verbs and adjectives, direct quotations also supported. Although considerable research has been done on attitudes, personality characteristics, and other variables affecting the likelihood of a person choosing to read a particular news story, very little work has been done on the effect of some variables over which news reporters have direct control elements of the style in which their stories are presented. In the study described here, we used verbal and physiological indicators of arousal one of the fundamental mechanisms in the human attention process as a yardstick in assessing the effects of three components of writing style: 1) Traditional (summary lead featuring most important events, followed by other factual information in descending order of importance) vs. narrative (more chronologically-ordered style). 2) Use of "punchy" verbs and adjectives vs. more passive or neutral words. 3) Use of direct quotations vs. paraphrased statements. The type of reaction measurement employed here does not appear to have been used previously in newspaper research, although it has been used by commercial research organizations to predict record hits in the music industry, evaluate broadcast commercials, preview television shows and even to assess the appeal of television anchormen on news broadcasts.^ Previous research^ suggests arousal is closely associated with decisions to stop or continue reading newspaper stories, regardless of whether the stories agree or disagree with the readers' views. Dr. Donohew is professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Kentucky. The research described here was conducted under a grant from the News Research Council, American Newspaper Publishers Association. This is an abstract of the research report. The author wishes to thank Leonard Tipton, Maxwell McCombs, Norman Van Tubergen, Robert Bostrom and Ben Whaley for advice or assistance on this project.

2 Although readers may turn away from materials when arousal level becomes too high for them individually, the primary problem would appear to be at the other extreme, that they turn away because they are not aroused enough. In other words, the style used may simply bore them. One editor has offered a widelyquoted opinion that newspaper readership is declining in the United States because "newspapers are dull, ponderous, and poorly writ- In selecting a topic to be used in preparing the various versions of news stories to represent the factors involved in this study, we settled upon the Guyana suicides because this topic met several criteria. First, it was one in which reader attitude was not likely to affect levels of arousal. We didn't expect anyone to be favorable to the outcome. Second, it was a story the readers knew involved actual events and therefore would be more likely to produce a valid response than one which they might suspect was fabricated. It also was powerful enough to evoke strong reactions even on second exposure. Finally, we wanted to stay as close as possible to actual news stories. We began with the New York Times 2indNewsweek versions, then edited and rewrote until each reported the same set of facts. These stories then were edited to include direct quotes or paraphrased comments and to include punchy verbs and adjectives or more passive words."* Altogether, eight different versions were required to involve all combinations of the three style factors. The stories were set into type and copies printed for use in the experiment. Stories were of approximately the same length and no headlines were used to avoid introducing other sources of possible influence. Subjects for the study were 18 to 22-year-olds one of the major target audiences of newspapers because it is believed that during this period they learn media habits which are likely to endure well into adult years. The 120 subjects included some persons attending high school or college and some not in school, among them secretaries, janitors, farmers and some unemployed persons. Each subject read only one version of the story while arousal responses were measured. Thus, we measured responses of 15 persons to the first version ofthe story, 15 to the second version and so on through the eight versions. Verbal assessments of reactions also were taken, using a "mood" scale,^ along with questions to determine if subjects were regular newspaper readers. Mood responses involve self interpretations of feelings. Results and Comments Responses to the eight versions of the news story show that: 1) The narrative style produced significantly greater physiological arousal than the traditional summary style across all conditions. 2) The narrative version which contained direct quotations but passive verbs and adjectives pro-

3 duced the greatest physiological arousal and the narrative version with direct quotes and active verbs and adjectives produced the second greatest arousal. 3) The narrative-direct quotesactive version produced the greatest positive mood change. 4) The traditional version without either direct quotes or punchy verbs and adjectives (traditionalparaphrased-passive) resulted in the greatest decreases in physiological arousal. 5) This same version also resulted in the greatest negative mood change. Questions intended to discriminate between regular newspaper readers and occasional or nonreaders revealed high agreement among the subjects. Almost 85 per cent claimed to read a newspaper regularly. A breakdown of responses on the factors studied here (Table 1) reveals that in every instance the mean scores for physiological arousal are higher and for mood change are less negative on narrative than on traditional style, on active verbs and adjectives than on passive ones, and on direct quotations than on paraphrased statements. On a number of stories that newspapers handle each day those outside the realm of breaking news there is some flexibility in choosing the style in which the story will be presented. The results of this study and others linking arousal and attention suggest that under flexible treatment conditions the narrative style, with the supporting factors examined here, is likely to generate more attention and arousal and consequently greater readership. The configuration of responses shown in Table 1 raises some interesting questions about what takes place when a person is reading the news. Why do readers interpret their feelings in a more negative way when there is not much arousal than when arousal is higher? On a story of tragedy such as the one they had just finished reading, one might reasonably have expected mood change to be in the opposite direction. In other words, the greater arousal generated by dramatic telling of the story might have been interpreted as being more negative TABLE 1. Mean Responses to Message Variables Message Style Narrative Traditional Active Passive Quotations Paraphrased Arousal Change Mood Change

4 and the lower arousal generated by the traditional version as less negative. What accounts for this? Very little is known about individual reactions to reading the news and thus only possible explanations to be investigated in further studies can be offered. One might speculate that on content of this nature the individual is able to experience events vicariously without the risk of suffering the consequences described in the story and this at least partly offsets the unpleasantness of the topic itself. Thus, this type of information, presented in an exciting way, allows the individual to experience "safe thrills." Obviously, there is much that remains to be leamed about the news reading process and its implications for writing styles. Future studies should include other types of content, different audiences, other characteristics of writing style and a measure of decisions to stop or continue reading. NOTES 1. See, for example, L. David Chagall, "Only as Good as His Skin Tests," TV Guide, March 26, 1977, pp. 5-10; James F. Haughton, "Scientists Study Brain Waves to Measure Impact of TV Commercials," TV Guide news release, March 27, 1979; Werner Kroeber-Riel, "Activation Research: Psychobiological Approaches in Consumer Research, Consumer Research, 1979, pp Lewis Donohew, Philip Palmgreen and Jack Duncan, "An Activation Model of Information Exposure," Communication Monographs, 1980, pp An extended description of the study abstracted here is forthcoming in Lewis Donohew, "Arousal and Affective Responses to Writing Styles," Journal of Applied Communication Research, in press. 3. Quoted in Fred Fedler, An Introduction to the Mass Media, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978). 4. For example, the "punchy" versions refer to "purplish-pink Flavour-Ade," whereas passive versions refer merely to "Flavour-Ade." 5. This scale, originally developed by social psychologists, has long been used in communication research. See Eleanor L. Norris, "Verbal Indices of Psychological Stress," in Abelson, et al., eds.. Theories of Cognitive Consistency: A Sourcebook, (Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1968), pp

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